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Excellent letter was right to quote Maxims’

Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012 8:39 AM

The letter from George Rose headlined Syllabus for a crash course in compassion (Herald, Nov. 11) was excellent!

The one improvement I suggest is that the title of Kiplings poem be corrected. Wikipedia has it incorrect as The Gods of the Copybook Headings. That shocked me, for when I was a child in the 1920s, my dad and I enjoyed this poem. Its last stanza was:

And when all this is accomplished

and the brave new world begins,Where each man insists on his merits,And no man desists from his sins,then as surely as water will wet us,as surely as fire will burn.

the gods of the copybook maxims

with terms and slaughters return.

The word maxims emphasizes the social and moral tinge, and assumed that readers knew what copybooks were. Some later reader changed that word to headings, which explains copybooks and maxims to readers but loses the socio-moral punch.

Wikipedia has a few other changes from Kiplings original that have been made through the decades, less important than the above.

Roses selection of examples for his crash course in compassion is great! His 10th example, Kiplings poem If, he calls an Ode to Obama, speaking directly to Obama.

I like to alter Kiplings words from If you can, and begin each line with Can you? ending with a question mark. That gives us a punch with each line!